Rolf Martin Theodor Dahlgren (7 July 1932 – 14 February 1987) was a Swedish people, Swedish-Danish people, Danish botany, botanist and professor at the University of Copenhagen from 1973 to his death.

Life

Dahlgren was born in Örebro on 7 July 1932 to apothecary Rudolf Dahlgren and wife Greta née Dahlstrand. He took his MSc degree in Biology in (1955) and PhD degree in Botany in (1963) at Lund University. He was killed in a car crash in Scania, Sweden on 14 February 1987.

Career

He continued working on South African plants during expeditions in 1956-57 and 1965–66, while affiliated with the ''Botanical Museum'' in Lund as ''docent''. In 1973, he became professor of botany at the University of Copenhagen. Here, he developed his Dahlgren system, system of Angiosperm classification, based on many more characters simultaneously than previous systems, most notably many phytochemistry, chemical plant traits (see also chemotaxonomy). Although the system was first presented in Danish language, Danish, it rapidly gained widespread acceptance, particularly due to the instructive diagrams, so-called Dahlgrenograms. His work on family circumscription in the Monocotyledons, published with Trevor Clifford, Harold Trevor Clifford and Peter Frederick Yeo, has had profound influence well into the molecular age. A Rolf Dahlgren Memorial Symposium was held in Berlin, Germany later in 1987. The couple had three children, Susanna, Helena and Fredrik. In 1986, he was elected member of Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The South African monotypic plant genus ''Dahlgrenodendron'' (J.H. Ross) J.J.M. van der Merwe & A.E. van Wyk was named to him honour in 1988

List of selected publications

* * * * Dahlgren R. (1975b). The distribution of characters within an angiosperm system. I. Some embryological characters. Botaniska Notiser 128: 181–197 * in * Dahlgren, R., 1977b. A note on the Taxonomy of the 'Synpetalae' and related groups. Publications of the Cairo University Herbarium, 7–8: 83- 102. * Dahlgren. R., Nielsen, B. J., Goldblait, P. & Rourke, J. P., 1979. Further notes on Retziaceae, its chemical contents and affinities. Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden, 66: 545-556 * Dahlgren, R., Jensen, S. R., & Nielsen, B. J., 1976. Iridoid compounds in Fouquieraceae and notes on its possible affinities. Bolaniska Notiser 129: 207-212. * * * Dahlgren R.(1983). "General Aspects of Angiosperm Evolution and Macrosystematics". Nordic Journal of Botany 3: 119-149 * *
Additional excerpts
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References

Citations

Sources

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External links

Example DahlgrenogramPortrait photo (Rolf Dahlgren is the person to the right)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dahlgren, Rolf 20th-century Danish botanists 20th-century Swedish botanists Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 1932 births 1987 deaths Lund University alumni Academic staff of the University of Copenhagen